


Goosed: A Geography Exercise

by mesonyx



Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Smut, Smut, gratuitous fluff, mile-high club: doing it wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 06:34:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8613028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mesonyx/pseuds/mesonyx
Summary: Nate has gotten into a tight scrape once again - parenthood. Is this what finally makes Nate normal, or is he undertaking the greatest adventure of his life?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ancalime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ancalime/gifts).



> I feel the same way about Uncharted 4 as you did when I read your letter! I hope you enjoy this story, Ancalime!
> 
> Thanks to Longpig for brainstorming help and Tielan for SPaG help. Thanks also to antumbral, without whom this story would be 100% weaker.
> 
> I’m also really sorry that I have a weird headcanon about Nate being really bad at dirty talk. I don’t know how that got in there.

Cassandra Drake was four days old, eight pounds two ounces, and twenty inches long. However, to her father, Nate, she weighed nothing, she took up no space curled up against his chest, and it felt like he had known her both forever and for no time at all. 

She was so little, so strange. Her fingers were too long for her hands, and they curled around his own and clutched with so much more strength than he expected. 

He held her close against his heart, and pressed his nose into her fine, feathery hair. How was it that her head smelled so good when her back end smelled so bad so much of the time? He laid back on the bed he shared with his wife, letting the baby lie against him, her cheek against his heart. He was mesmerized by the rise and fall of her back with each breath she drew.

He hadn’t slept well in days - weeks, really, considering how many times he jolted awake in the nights leading up to Cassie’s birth, struck with sudden worry. His thoughts were a mess. His own breath would grow short, and his heart would thump wildly. Fatherhood was more terrifying to him than fighting yetis or escaping mooks with guns.

Elena came out of the bathroom with one towel wrapped around her body, wet hair hanging loose. “Thanks for giving me the chance to shower,” she said, rubbing another towel against her head.

Nathan pressed one palm to the small of his daughter’s back. "Did we fuck up?" he asked suddenly.

"What?” Elena asked, allowing the towel in her hands to slip. “Oh my god, is she still breathing?"

"Yes, I mean, no, I mean, uh…” Nathan sat up straight, and Cassie slid down into his arms. He hadn’t meant to panic his wife. “Maybe you should hold her for a bit."

Elena tucked her extra towel under her arms and sat down next to Nate on the bed, reaching out and touching their infant daughter gently. "So she’s all right?"

Nate smiled sadly. "She's perfect. That's the problem."

Elena looked towards him with concern. "Are you all right?" she asked. “You don’t sound all right.”

Nate was silent for a full minute, running his hand along his daughter’s back. “She’s perfect. She deserves parents who are perfect.” He sighed. “I’m not perfect. I don’t think I have it in me.”

"Want to talk about it?" Elena asked.

Nate had been too afraid to speak of his worries, as though, by keeping silent, he could pretend they weren’t real. Still, they ate him up from the inside out, might as well let them out now. "I've never had much of a father figure in my life, you know that,” he said. “My actual dad was never there for me - you know that - and while I still had Sam, and then Sully - and they're both kind of screw-ups in their own way."

Elena leaned her head against Nate’s shoulder. "You know that I love both Sam and Sully."

Nate raised his eyebrows. "But you don't disagree that they’re screw-ups."

Well,” she said. "They're both... uh... they can be pretty questionable sometimes, I’ll admit."

"I don't know what I'm doing,” Nate said. “How can I be a father if I’ve never really had one? How do other people do it? I don’t know anything about how to become a father.” He shook his head. “That came out wrong,” he added, once he realized what he had said.

But Elena was too quick on the uptake. "I don't know much about what sex ed they gave you at a Catholic orphanage, but I can try to explain,” she offered.

“I see where you’re going with this,” Nate said, interrupting her. “It was a beautiful night along the coast of Morocco…”

 

It was a beautiful night along the coast of Morocco, and Nate and Elena were both drunk and horny. They had spent much of the week exploring the Saadian Tombs and other mysterious desert sites, narrowly averting death from undead zombies, sandstorms, and one particularly tetchy camel. They celebrated their survival with wine and tagine once they were safely back in Agadir. After a boisterous dinner in the resort restaurant, they headed upstairs where they could paw at one another more privately.

Their hotel room faced the beach; a comforting breeze slipped through the open window. Elena struggled to open the door while Nate ran his hands along her sides, tracing her figure to her hips and pulling her towards him.

“Give me a minute!” she whispered, more loudly than she intended. “Shh!” she added, as though it had been Nate making too much noise.

“I can’t wait much longer,” Nate said. 

Elena could tell. His erection was firmly pressed against her ass. “Stop it!” she said, smacking his hands away and laughing. “Get back! Get back, you sex-crazed fiend!”

Inside the room was decorated in jewel-like hues of blue and green against warm tangerine-colored walls. The cool, salty breeze enveloped them as Elena opened the door. Nate picked up his wife from behind and carried her to the bed, dropping her unceremoniously on the mattress.

“Let me get my shoes off!” Elena objected, laughing wildly, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and trying to pull the boots off her feet.

“There’s no time,” Nate insisted. “I need you.” He focused on unfastening Elena’s belt and pants.

“Okay, fine,” Elena said, grinning, as she gamely began unfastening Nate’s belt in return. “We’ll get straight to the good stuff.”

The two of them were too drunk to undress efficiently. Nate was already too close, and Elena didn’t even have her pants off yet. He stared down at Elena, whom he loved so much - her face, her neck, the slope of her chest. What a beautiful smile. What enchanting eyes. What tempting lips. He saw the tops of her milky white thighs and...

“What did you do?” Elena yelped, as Nate shuddered and fell forward on top of her.

“Fuck,” Nate said. “I… came too soon.”

“Considering how much wine we had with dinner, I thought you were going to have whiskey dick,” Elena remarked. “I’m not even mad. I’m impressed.”

“That’s right. Keep your expectations low, and you won’t be disappointed with me, babe,” Nate said, winking. “If you’re still feeling frisky, I know what we could do.” He continued to paw at her jeans, trying to peel them away from her body. 

“If this is going where I think it’s going,” Elena said, “then I’m all yours.” She kicked off her pants and threw her ankles over Nate’s shoulders. He enthusiastically buried his face between her legs until she put her head back and nearly cried out with relief.

 

“Sorry to fill you in,” Elena said, “but you can’t make a baby doing the things we did that night.”

 

“Huh,” said Nate. “But we fall aslleep together afterwards…” He waggled an eyebrow jokingly. “That’s not how it works?”

“No,” Elena said, smiling and squeezing her husband’s hand. “That’s not how it works.”

Cassie pressed her face from side to side against her father’s chest and began to fuss, smacking her lips the same way Nate did during particularly tasty meals.

“I think she’s ready for her own version of happy hour,” Elena said. 

“Another one? She just ate before you got into the shower,” said Nate.

“She inherited her appetite from you,” Elena said. She made herself more comfortable on the bed next to Nate and reached out for her daughter. “Hand her over.”

Nate found himself reluctant to hand her off. “Watch her head, watch her head. She’s so floppy. She must get that from your side of the family.”

“I promise I’ll give her back when we’re done,” Elena said. “Trust me, I’m going to need a break if she claws me up again. Can you find her scratch mittens?” She adjusted the towel and the baby accordingly. “You know - you got this,” she said, picking up the thread of discussion they were treading before that walk down memory lane. “It’s scary - I’m scared too - but you’re so careful with her…”

But Nate felt that familiar fear tighten in his chest again, that worry that he wasn’t good enough - that he wasn’t normal enough - to be a good father. So, instead of opening up to Elena in that moment, he opted for more deflection. “So you’re sure it wasn’t Agadir,” Nathan said, standing up and searching the top of the dresser for the small white mittens to cover the baby’s hands. “You’re right. She doesn’t look Moroccan.” He found the mittens and returned to the bed, struggling to get them over Cassie’s balled-up fists. “Nine months, going back - think maybe it was that weekend near Ulaanbaatar?”

 

They had got a long way from Ulaanbaatar to explore the remains of an old Buddhist temple on the chilly plains of Mongolia. Nathan knew how much his wife suffered in the cold; her hands were freezing, and she shivered all over. He could see the goosebumps creeping up the back of her neck. Since half of their things had been caught up in customs at the airport, Elena was without adequate clothing and had spent the whole day trying to get warm.

They were lucky to be sharing a sleeping bag, Nate thought. Elena might have frozen to death on her own. He pulled his wife close to him and ran his hands along her bare skin, hoping the friction would help her warm up faster.

“Are you trying to turn me on?” Elena asked, throwing her ponytail over her shoulder as she looked back at him, lying behind her. “Because if you are, it’s working.”

“Now that you mention it,” Nate replied, “my dick could use a warm place to be.”

“Oh,” Elena said, pulling a face. “That actually kind of ruins it for me.” She rolled back onto her side and resumed being the little spoon, backing into her husband and leeching his body heat away.

“Geez, now I know for sure you didn’t marry me for my dirty talk,” Nate said. “I’ll go back to rubbing you all over - how’s that?” He massaged his palms and fingertips firmly into her shoulders and neck as she murmured her consent. Elena, hands still cold, reached behind her to caress Nate’s five o’clock shadow in return.

She was almost purring, backing her ass up into his crotch and grinding against him while he hugged and rubbed and cuddled her until she was sufficiently warmed up. He was afraid to ruin it again by saying anything, but he was rock hard, and she had to know it by now. “May I?” he whispered into her ear.

“Allow me,” she said, reaching her hand down to his shaft and guiding it into her. He shivered at her touch. She moaned softly as he entered her slowly. “Nate,” she said breathlessly, “is your dick warm now?!”

“Sure is,” he said, thinking that even if his dirty talk was bad, at least it eventually worked.

 

“See, that trip was about nine months ago,” Nathan said, confident in his ability to count backwards. “Right?”

Elena bit her lip. “Nate, that was almost a year ago,” she said. “I think you’re better at counting forwards. Better leave the counting backwards to me.”

“Well, I guess that’s goodt,” Nate said, “seeing as you’re in charge of the numbers around here.”

Elena shrugged as best she could with an infant in her arms. “I’m on maternity leave now, dude,” she said. “You’ll have to find someone to fill in for me for the next few weeks.”

“Maybe Sam?” Nate suggested.

“Not Sam!” Elena said. “That man gives money away. I’d hate to see what his balance sheets would look like.”

Cassie, half-full, lackadaisically mouthed her mother until Elena decided she was done for the moment. She pulled the infant away from her breast and turned towards her husband. “Do you want to burp her?”

“I can do that, yeah,” Nate said, in spite of that constantly creeping fear that he was going to ruin everything somehow. “If I can discover Shambala, and fight Nazi zombies, burping a baby should be a piece of cake.” He’d tried a few times already, necessitating a change of clothing every time - sometimes his, sometimes the baby’s, once Elena’s, and once on the part of a poor stranger at the hospital nursery who happened to be in the line of fire. He was trying to make light of his worries, but somehow he only served to remind himself of all the reasons he wouldn’t be capable of this - all the reasons he could not be a normal person, lead a normal life, raise a normal child.

“I don’t know,” Elena said, trying to meet Nate at his level. “I think it might be an entirely different skillset, but I’ve never fought Djinn in the desert, so what would I know?” She handed Cassie off to her husband gently, holding the baby’s head carefully.

“Actually, now that I think of it more in-depth,” Nate said, “it could have been that night in Zagreb.” He held their infant child up against his shoulder before he remembered some of the details he’d found out about when they first learned Elena was pregnant. He’d researched babies with the same intense zeal he’d once applied to deciphering the secret adventures of Sir Francis Drake. He remembered that it was better to burp babies sitting up on his knee. If anything, it would at least keep him out of the spit-up splash zone. “Remember Zagreb?” Nate asked. “I liked Zagreb. I really liked Zagreb.”

 

Their first flight of the day had left before 4 am local time, and they were jet-lagged enough anyway that they missed their connection. It was no problem to change their plans on the go - they were used to doing that frequently by now - but they were already upset with one another for reasons neither of them could remember and they fought all the way from the airport to the hotel. The cab driver didn’t even wait for Elena to count out correct change before speeding away; it wasn’t worth the extra euros if he had to spend one more moment with this bickering couple.

By the time they got to their room, everything about one another was enough to piss them off. The sloppy way Nate had dressed that morning made Elena embarrassed to be seen with him. The way Elena’s hair kept escaping from her low, loose ponytail drove Nate crazy. When they opened the door to their room, and saw how claustrophobically small it was, they threw their luggage against opposite walls and made as much space between themselves as possible.

“If you don’t tuck in your damn shirt,” Elena said, “I’m going to rip it off you.”

“If you don’t fix your stupid ponytail,” Nate replied, “I’m gonna pull your hair out of your stupid hair-tie-thingy.”

In an instant they were at each other, hurriedly tearing off one another’s clothes and running their hands through each other’s hair. Nothing made them go at it more enthusiastically than being angry at one another. They clawed at each other, leaving marks on the skin. They pushed and pulled each other’s clothing, each other’s hair, each other’s limbs. The bed bounced and creaked as they rolled across it. Nate moaned and Elena shrieked. They got a call from the front desk; there’d been complaints. Could they please keep it down? They agreed and then reneged as soon as the phone was back in its cradle.

Not long after that, they lay on opposite ends of the bed, both breathless and sweaty and completely forgetting that they’d even fought earlier that day.

“I feel so much better,” Nate said.

“Same,” Elena agreed. “How about a nap?”

“Nap sounds good,” Nate said, and he turned on his side and pulled his wife close until they both dozed off until dinner time.

 

Elena laughed. “Let’s just say it was Zagreb, then,” she said. “Since you liked Zagreb so much.”

Nate cocked his head, while Cassie leaned forward on his lap for burping. “You say that like it wasn’t Zagreb.” He patted his daughter’s back gently, encouraging her to emit gas and bubbles of spittle. He loved this little girl so much; even her gassiness was intriguing to him. But it still didn’t erase that horrible feeling twisting up his gut, that feeling that he’d made a terrible mistake when he and Elena decided to go all in on this.

“Okay,’ said Elena. “It’s been fun reminiscing, but I have a confession to make.” She scooted closer to her husband and set her hand on his free knee. “I know exactly when we conceived this little girl.”

“Chiang Mai?” Nate guessed, choking down that fatherhood fear again, hoping that continuing this memory game could quash it, could make it go away. “Wait, no - Quito?” He tried again, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. “Maybe Melbourne?”

“You’ve never been to Quito with me,” Elena said suspiciously. “And you realize Chiang Mai and Melbourne were over a year ago. How long do you think it takes to make a baby?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Nate joked. “Catholic sex ed, after all. But for real - if you know, then tell me. I’m curious.”

Elena blushed deeply. “Sully’s plane,” she said bashfully. “It was that time in Sully’s plane.”

“Sully’s plane?” Nate said, aghast. For a moment all of his fears dissipated into nothingness as he flashed back to what was probably the most mortifying moment of his married life. 

And then he laughed out loud.

 

When Sully disembarked from the plane that day, he wagged a finger at the two passengers in his plane, Nathan and Elena. “It will take me five minutes to find someone around here to pay for the airplane fuel,” he said. “Don’t leave the plane. Don’t go anywhere. And don’t do anything stupid.” That last line he directed right at Nate. “We don’t have much time so if you exit the plane, I’m serious - you’re getting left behind.”

“Aye-aye, captain,” Elena said, reaching over and squeezing Nate’s hand. Sully shook his head, still not sure if leaving these two behind was a good idea, and shut the door behind him. Elena watched Sully walk down the dock towards the main building of the small coastal airport, and before Nate knew what was happening, she was unbuttoning her top and unbuckling her belt.

“We only have five minutes!” Nate protested. “You heard Sully!”

“I’ve seen you go faster than that, cowboy,” Elena replied. “If you don’t giddyup right now, you’ll owe me for it later.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Nate said, undoing his own pants. They both rose from their seats and in an instant Nate pinned Elena against the curving interior wall of the Grumman Goose that Sully had named Hog Wild II. She wriggled out of her own pants before she turned her attention to Nate’s, and spread her legs apart while he pressed himself into her. “Get along, little dogie,” he said, smacking her bare ass cheek.

“No,” she replied. “Don’t do the dirty talk. You’re bad at it. Do the thing that you’re good at.”

So Nate shut up and grabbed her waist and drove himself deep inside her, thrusting his hard cock into her with fervor. Elena’s back was marked by the rivets on the wall behind her, and she scratched Nate’s back to match. A few more good thrusts - it didn’t even take the full five minutes Nate had allotted himself - and he gasped and slumped his head against Elena’s shoulders, satisfied.

That was, until Sully reappeared. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” he cried out as he reopened the passenger door to the plane. “Cover up, Nate, for Chrissake!”

The pair quickly reassembled their clothing and slunk back to their seats like scolded schoolchildren. Elena’s face turned bright red, and even Nate felt himself blushing, like he’d just been caught with a hand in the cookie jar.

“Desecrating my beautiful plane,” Sully mumbled. “And I just had her detailed.”

Nate and Elena shot each other mischievous glances. It was all they could do to keep from giggling from embarrassment.

Elena was so glad to hear Nate’s laughter. They’d both been under so much stress; it had been a while since she’d heard him let himself get this comfortable with her and the baby. “As much as I’d like to forget that ever happened,” she said, “I’m glad it’s got us this beautiful little girl.” She looked from their daughter back up to him, but he had gone silent and was staring into the middle distance. “Now would be a good time for you to say something like ‘yeah, me too,’” she prompted. “Or, if you have something else on your mind, I suggest spilling it before it eats you up from the inside out.”

“Sorry,” Nate said, shaking his head and absently bouncing the knee where Cassie had finished burping. “It’s... overwhelming. This whole parenting thing. Trying to be a good father. Trying to be a normal family. That’s all.”

“It’s okay to be scared,” Elena said, squeezing his knee and looking up at him sweetly. “And it’s also okay not to be normal.”

Nate met her eyes and felt the tenseness in his chest finally start to melt away a little. “You don’t want to be normal?”

“We tried that once already,” Elena said. “It didn’t go over too well, remember?” She leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder. “But that’s all right. I would rather have you - and all the adventure that comes with you. Even though she can’t say so herself right now, I think I can speak for Cassie too, in that she feels the same way.” She turned her face and kissed her husband on the cheek. “There’s nothing normal about being a parent anyway. Think about it for a second. This whole process has been freaking weird, from the beginning.”

“That’s… somewhat reassuring,” Nate sighed. “But I still don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to be a father.”

“You didn’t know how to be a husband at first either,” Elena said. She let one hand wander around his back, rubbing wherever it found the muscles had tightened with worry. “I didn’t know how to be a wife. But we learned. We figured it out as we went along. This… this will be kinda like that.”

“What are we going to tell her?” Nate asked, holding his daughter close against his chest once again.

“About Sully’s plane?” Elena asked. “Nothing,” she said firmly. “We can never speak of it again.”

“Not… well, not that specifically,” Nate replied. “But how we met - what we’ve done - what we still do sometimes… We became a family already knowing each other, even the bad things. But this little girl - she doesn’t know anything about us yet,” He looked lovingly at his little girl, close to tears. But now that he’d started, he found himself unable to stop. All of his fears, all of his worries, all of the concern that had been welling up inside him for weeks finally spilled over. “What if she hates us when she grows up and learns more? What if she hates travel and adventure and history and research? What if all she wants is to be normal, and we can’t give her that?”

 

“All of the things that you’re worried about are still a long way off from now,” Elena said. “There’s plenty of time for us to figure out how we might broach the topic with her. Until then,” she said, running her hand along the baby’s face, “we give her everything she needs - our unconditional love, our time, our attention…”

“Our ability to sleep through the night,” Nate added.

“Our sanity, probably,” Elena said. “The same things we give each other.”

Cassie gurgled and waved her hands while Nate pulled her close to his chest again. It was hard to believe how flimsy she was, how delicate. Her head was too big, her fingers too long, her skin too wrinkly. And yet she was still, somehow, the most perfect thing he’d ever laid eyes on - more beautiful and valuable than all the treasures he’d found all over the world in all his lifetime.


End file.
